The brand YOU journey....

Building a brand you is just a beginning of a long journey. Its so important to take stock of your personal brand time and again. And most of us seldom do that.

With a thorough insight of our own competency and skills circle, and added to that our formal degrees, work experience and other paraphernalia, each one of us must be able to articulate what our personal brand statement is!

Almost entire careers or work-lifes get squandered in the absence of a personal brand statement - and a personal brand statement just mens that you are sold to yourself. Only when you have been successful in selling to you, will you be able to sell to the outside world... the outside world would mean anything, just about anyone of your stakeholders - family members, client, employer, workplace, society and so on.

Another notion which we all cherish, wrongly but, is to think that our personal brand remains the way it is for the rest of our life. This is far from true.

In a world where even product or service brands re-position, re-jig, and re-invent them in appropriate phases of their life cycle, it will be foolish and rather suicidal to think that you can do with a static personal brand.

Whether your personal brand works or not at any point in time, is not just dependent on who you are and what you stand for, plus your competencies; it is, more importantly, how the brand is seen to be, by the end user - it can be the job market, employer, and strangely even a spouse. For your brand to win in the 'marketplace', the users have to feel the relevance of the brand and a need for the same. If it's an employer or someone who has to invest capital in your personal brand, they need to see a value add by "brand you" to them.

So, as you can see, the brand you as seen by others can be so much different from what it really is. The essence will be to communicate and clearly articulate the value of your brand to the relevant stakeholders - by making the right noises - your brand communication.

As we see many times, choice of the personal brand which an employer makes is purely his perception of the brand. So, success in the employer market could depend immensely on reducing the gap between your brand in reality and the perception of your brand. Its all about effectively creating your brand speak. And communicating it at the right time, in the right place, in the right quantity.

The most important part of the brand you, is to make sure that you also must do a reality check of the brand. Is it relevant to what you aspire for? Are you honing yourself with the right competencies, soft skills, knowledge etc, to be in the race for mindspace (with your stakeholders)....

In todays times of upheaval in the global economies, which does not spare any nook and corner of the world, and any individual, the probability of your brand taking a beating or being battered over time is very high. It is times like these that dictate a re-jig of your personal brand.

The key ingredient of your brand, irrespective of how you reposition and re-invent is - the brand must have persistence, and stay afloat against all odds. The brand must keep going. The brand must possess and live a never say die attitude. The brand must stay relevant and must be at the right place. The brand must be a powerhouse of knowledge, and niche skills, which could be transferable across different industries, timezones, and geography.

Ensure that you evaluate the credentials of your personal brand, and see how it must be re-invented or if need be re-born, time and again

Quick-tips that will reinforce the power of BRAND YOU!

1. Have a vision for yourself. Articulate it well. The more clarity you get in this articulation – put it in writing and revisit/rework in it time and again – the easier it is to position BRAND YOU.

2. Create your ME brand-speak – how do you wish others speak about you/see you/perceive you. Check with your close friends how you are perceived – it will help you position the YOU brand powerfully.

3. Make BRAND YOU Vision boards – this is a powerful tool – vision boards that help you get to where you want – in most cases vision/imagination translates to reality. What does BRAND YOU stand for, and what are the offerings, competencies. Let all this be in your vision board. This will make sure that BRAND YOU eventually gets powerful!

4. Keep a goal book and iterate it again and again. Put your goals in present tense, and feel the sense of accomplishment, right now. These goals can be personal, professional, social and so on. Goals are not necessarily measured in money – and many a times, you would see that by accomplishing something else, money will flow in naturally.

5. Discover your natural ‘flow’. Flow is something that will use your strengths, make you be at your best always, without you feeling the heat and stress of slogging. When you do something you enjoy, ‘natural flow’ sans any effort does happen. You have to discover your flow understanding yourself well. And no one else can do it for you – off course your family, friends, colleagues can help you spot your ‘flow’ – the success of BRAND YOU depends so much on knowing your ‘flow’

6. Work on a time-bound IDP (Individual development plan). All of us are ‘work in progress’ and discover more of us as we live life fully. Drawing an ICP creates a great sense of self discipline – in figuring out where we are, and where we would want to be, on the basis of our strengths. It helps us build new qualities, which make us better BRAND YOU.

7. Image your BRAND ‘outcome’ personality – this is a time tested technique, with many authors dedicating books on how to image a better ‘BRAND YOU’. Imaging is pretty simple – visualize the BRAND YOU, and feel that you are that in this moment – behave as if you are already there – use all your energy to do this with sincerity, passion and commitment. Most of what you image turns out to reality sooner that you want.

8. Play only to your own rules – this is to say that your goals shall be by your standards, and not by comparing you with others. That never works, and added to that leads to energy leaks. Focusing on things besides YOU, you are wasting your time and energy, only to get you to a less resourceful state. Why do that? Every living minute, you must spend only in a manner that will better the BRAND YOU – it’s your life.

9. Attitude determines your altitude. There will be when things come to a naught, things don’t work as you wished – worst thing to do when such things do happen, is to move to the negative resourceful state. Blaming you, others, the environment, the recession and what not. When things do not seem to be their best, take a break from what you do. Loosen up. Relax. That state of being will throw up new features of the BRAND YOU, which you can use to promote, reposition, or even re-launch YOU. All this will happen when you carry the best of good spirits, great humor and a sense of balance. Stay alive and stay positive. Be a positive outcome addict – there is great power in being a positive outcome addict. Always wear that attitude to YOUR brand.

10. Be your own success coach – you will come across endless volumes of success literature, which no doubt will serve as tools of inspiration. And some of that mentioned by success coaches will be useful if you can practice. But there is a caveat: YOU are unique, and you alone are the author of BRAND YOU. Only you will know what needs to be done, worked on, corrected, promoted better, and played down in the YOU product. So, use all the coaching tools that you can lay hands on: You are the powerful river, and you know your strengths. Decide how to course through the highs and lows, with the objective of getting to your own magical ocean of accomplishment and satisfaction.

11. Play to the best of your strengths: It’s now become fad for coaches to suggest, work on your weaknesses. That would be to squander away opportunities of a lifetime, only to brood on a couple of qualities which are in us. And there is enough research to show that in most occasions, you don’t fully overcome some weaknesses. So, why waste useful energy, time and resources on weaknesses – instead, it would be a great thing to work and hone your strengths, see what best use the strengths can be put to use to create our own victories in life.

12. The power of discipline and persistence: If there are 2 great qualities that will make the difference between what you could have been and what you are – it’s discipline and persistence. Great careers in any walk of life have been brought to a halt, killed in infancy by the lack of discipline and persistence. Bear that in mind, and you certainly will be unstoppable in your course. They say discipline comes by repeating right acts for a month, on which habits are formed. As for persistence, it’s just that you refuse to be put down, come what may, until you reach your highest potential.

13. Replace your ‘no no’ habits – this is a follow through of being disciplined. The only challenge to discipline is we doing things that are no no – things that neither gives us short term happiness, and long term benefits/satisfaction. Work to throw any habit that will answer in the negative for these 2 questions. This done, you will be so quick in erasing all your no-no habits. (The best example is being worried. Pose these 2 questions, and you’ll see how ridiculous it’s to be worried – being worried is the least resourceful state for any human being, who has been gifted the joy of Life)

14. Get the Action habit – Action is the only antidote to a non-resourceful state. Just try this – when you feel a bit down, whatever silly the reason is – just set in motion yourself – jog, walk, climb a staircase, or just step into the coffee shop next door. You will see that your non-resourceful state vanishes. That’s why we are all taught never to be idle.

15. Be infectiously enthusiastic and incorrigibly optimistic – this is a must. Enthusiasm and optimism will score the highest, amongst qualities of a great player of life. In a sense, enthusiasm happens so naturally, when you are in your flow. Do something that is not natural to you, and your enthusiasm wanes and dwindles. There is another way of looking at this. The moment you begin enjoy doing some of the inevitable chores of life – which all of us, any case, must do – then enthusiasm sets in. Enthusiasm is also, all about being in the present, and enjoying the present – the now, and the YOU in the now. Optimism comes by always firmly believing the power of a positive outcome – a positive outcome addict, is necessarily an incorrigible optimist.

16. Pick up the best from past experiences; learn and move on, or ignore and move on. When we sit back and think how much time we spend introspecting why things did or did not happen this way or otherwise, beyond some point, we are wasting the present. Things have decisively gone behind, and that’s why it is called the past. So many of us willfully want to hang on there, with no value add to the BRAND YOU. Not to say that you should be a rock. Do look back at the past, and see what lessons can come to us. Be done with that. Possibly, if there have been some wrong steps, wisdom would mean that we do not repeat it. Period.

17. Focus on playing well, winning will be a by product – Playing well happens when you are fully in the present, engaged in your ‘flow’ and be in a positive outcome mode. With all this, playing well will happen so easily. And once you play well – with excellence by your own standards – winning by your terms is bound to happen. That’s why it is said, play your game well and winning will be a by product. That’s precisely how it should be also. Most time, when you look around, you will get a feeling that someone had it easily. It’s just that their focus is on just playing well and nothing else. Somewhere I read that ace athlete Ashwini Nachappa said exactly this when quizzed how she beat P T Usha – Ashwini never aimed to be better than P T Usha, she just wanted to better her own record, and winning happened. Truly, winning is just a by-product.

18. Stand by your own Brand – You have to be the spokesperson for the BRAND YOU, and no else can ever be. Think of that, when, even for a moment you think of blaming some external factor or some person for what you are and what you aren’t. Nothing can be comical than blaming someone. You are the owner of the BRAND YOU. All the attributes of the brand are as demonstrated by you – the place, the features, the promotion, packaging… This essentially means that the ownership of whatever happens to BRAND YOU is only YOU alone.

19. Get the right advice – all of us love getting advices, from all and sundry. The point is you know your brand best. Advice, unless it comes in from a stakeholder in the brand, or a well-wisher who thinks the brand should flourish, is of no use. All the more such advice taken from an unconnected quarter will harm the brand, more than an iota of any good it does. So, beware of who YOUR brand consultants and advisors are.

20. Core competence – be aware of your core competence. This comes in from understanding what you flow is, which you will spend a lot of time discovering as you play the game of life. And once you be aware of the core competence – call it the core values of your brand, you must keep improvising on the value offerings of the YOU brand, day in and day out. Look around brands that have thrived long times, and you will see that the value offering was improvised, price points tweaked, customized offerings made, re-positioning done almost every season or every year. BRAND YOU is no different. Sustain the value offering, reposition if need be, package well, and customize time and again.

21. Use the 10000 hour study tool to increase your circle of competence – this is a great thing to do, once your goal is to excel in your circle of competence. Spend approximately 10000 hours of reading/understanding better in the area of your competence, to make you an authority. This gives immense power to the Brand YOU. It may sound tough, but just think about the fact that the life cycle of the BRAND YOU is going to be anything like 20 to 30 years, depending on when you launch the YOU brand. The time you will spend honing competencies will shape your brand across 3 decades.

22. Never brood on your weaknesses – If you read point 11, then this is just a take away. Once you play by only your strengths, then there is hardly any energy that can be spent on thinking about your weaknesses. Nothing would have been ever accomplished in this world if some of the greatest people of our times chose to spend time brooding. They all accepted their weaknesses, and assiduously positioned/honed their strengths. You just do the same for the BRAND YOU.

23. Sell you to YOU first – This is about you being a buyer of you. Unless you are convinced that you will buy your brand for what it offers, then who else will invest in the BRAND YOU. So, sell you to you. Create that YOU sales talk/promo/30 second spot. Believe you and the world will come flocking to your brand. BRAND YOU.
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24. Say no to gossip and whining – doing this is absolute energy leak for BRAND YOU. When you gossip, whine and complain, or do anything in a negative resourceful state, you are wasting time on some other brand. And what good does that do to BRAND YOU? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So forever, never even spend your precious time worrying about some other BRAND. Decide that your time will be spent only on BRAND YOU, come what may.

25. Be deaf to negativists – there are a whole lot of people who would not even remotely know what BRAND YOU stands for. Yet, they have an opinion, say that will not work, say you will fail, and what not. Keep the BRAND YOU deaf to such naysayers and energy drainers.

Like to read a bit more on some of these... Please see http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/author/muralidharan

Never lower the bar for your team... that is injustice by all means!!

This is, for a change, a desirable leadership trait - and that too a very important one. In the more recent times, I have been privy only to the fact that the leadership of the team or an organisation is concerned that the best in the team vis a vis performance is yet to be displayed, and it is the singular responsibility of team leadership, NOT TO LOWER THE BAR for the performers in the organisation.
Might sound so strange and even weird; but having seen this in reality, and also having heard a lot about how 'setting the right standards' is so important, not only for the organisation, but also for the team, and by that, the career of every single member of the team!
While a few leaders come down heavily on not so good performance, and even get tough from the execution point of view, surprisingly enough, there are also leaders who thrive on sub-optimal performance, just by shifting the blame of the handful of external factors - a bad client, a slow market, a perceived disrespect to the brand et al... in essence, it is either being blind to the whole world out there, or being naive to think that what you think is right, is what everyone thinks! You just stand on a high illusory platform, and be akin to a frog in the well... and to top it all, you are immune to what happens in similar companies, with similar people, with almost just a similar external environment..!! Owing to being driven by the internal environment (?), you just stay in the comfort zone and live by sub-optimal standards....
The biggest loser, in my opinion is the team and its members... your own colleagues, who trust your wisdom to grow them, and their career..! By your own deeds of not knowing where to set the bar, you make them feel nice with a performance, that is just good, from the internal perspective. Little do they realize that what they think is good, is just not good to the outside world, which is where their careers will prosper and have to take wings....
Good is the enemy of the Great, and a 'myopic good' is the greatest evil for bright careers... it is the duty of every single leader to stay clear of any sort of myopic good - even if it means a temporary setback, a failure to get to stated goals, or even a setback in position...
Wake up to reality of the market, and do good to the company, your team, and all stakeholders.....

Leadership.... in hiring from direct competition.

It’s now common, and rather inevitable, to poach from your direct competition. However, there are a few don’ts, and surprisingly, these don’ts will lead to Leadership by the day… and WOW the prospective employee.....

1. Never start with 'your company is in dumps...'. The candidate is willing to look at you precisely because of some perception close to that or any issue which may not be in the open… Re-iterate as to how life can be better in your place, rather than speaking the load of negatives about competition.... throwing negatives reflects badly on the quality of your HR function...!

2. Engage only in a relevant conversation, from the specific prospective employee point of view. Statements like 'xyzee from your place came at our terms etc' would only get you desperadoes' and not the real stars... Remember, you are not a savior, and you want them for a business objective too.

3. Listen to the prospective employee point of view, instead of mouthing platitudes on how your company got people cheap... What if the prospective employee retorts 'you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.. uh...'?!

4. Showcase as to why you are good, and not as to why the other company is bad. The employee comes from there, and has no need to hear his present company information from you.

5. Clarify roles and responsibilities, instead of only sounding like buying 'human vegetables'. That is HR at its pits, and is a bad reflection of how you value people.

6. By taking names, of whom you got for how much, you drive the prospective employee to more comparison which could lead to inequity thoughts, and that would only harm your company interests... plus now those who have come in are 'your employees', and whatever you did and do, directly speaks volumes about your quality of hiring.

7. A simple "this is the best we can pay in your case" is good for everyone. Don't throw open a Pandora’s box by mentioning all irrelevant data.

8. Remember, you hire people for your company growth. If that is not the pivot, then you are harming careers, and also you company.

9. Good prospective employees are smart candidates... think otherwise, the cream will never fall for you verbal innuendo. And no book in HR advises innuendo as a prudent hiring practice.

10. Allow the prospective employee to speak, and for god sake, you listen. As they always say, two ears are to listen that much more, that speaking with one mouth. And if it’s a telephonic conversation, you have to listen that much more.

Remember, the prospective candidates, in these few conversations, see you as a brand ambassador. And HR is indeed the best brand ambassador for your organisation.

Following these pointers in hiring from competition, is indeed Leadership by the day.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate....!

Reading through a couple of books this weekend, both by leading headhunters - detailing what all clicks amongst successful CEO's... both the works mention 'communication' as one critical ingredient of CXO successs and overall strategy...

Tremendous emphasis on 'communicating' is a hallmark of successful CEO's all over the globe.... and both authors also go to the extent of stating that the CEO's rather be called "Chief Engagement Officers" - who engage the organisation by constantly staying communicated......

If the question is, what is to be communicated by the CEO, it states that anything that is worth the know of the teams should be communicated... like milestones, accomplishments, client acquisitions, setbacks in revenues and profits, trials, lawsuits, changes in the anvil etc.

And even when there is nothing worth mentioning in a week or month, just a plain good 'there is nothing important to be shared this week, and we shall certainly communicate more next week' is so powerful and unambiguous, and means so much to the organisation.

Some communication rather than no communication is a powerful mantra for overall corporate hygiene.... and this is so important to ensure that the lack of communication does not lead to any unwanted informal communication amongst any of the stakeholders.....

So, Leadership by the day, is to use the power of COMMUNICATION, by the day, to the hilt.....

What are you and me, budding CXO's communicating today? We better communicate, communicate, and communicate NOW and ALWAYS......

Tete a tete with a CEO.... lesson today.....

It is not often you get to meet CEO's when you are a recruitment professional... today, i was fortunate to meet a CEO of a large recruitment company and the meeting through so many valuable insights into managing people and companies..... and one quality which stood out tall in this meeting was.... be present in any discussion and engage 110%... treat that as a unique learning session, irrespective of with whom the meeting is....

....i was by all means an ordinary recruiter and he, the very successful Indian CEO of a leading global recruitment firm. He took time off to meet me for a good 2 hours - this is such a rarity in today's' world of recruitment professionals who are so busy to take your call, to acknowledge receiving your profile by mail, and have only time to say that they are busy... when we all do that, what we imply is that the other person who calls, writes a mail, meets us.. is not important in our scheme of things - there can be no better statement of our commitment to people, leave alone grooming their careers and growth!! Here is a CEO who probably has the most hectic schedule and yet takes time off to meet someone who is a fellow professional albeit at a junior level. His discussion is centered on all positives, and his eyes sparkle with the vision he has for the company, and the passion with which he is involved with the other person (in this case, me).

Moral : Be passionate about meeting people, and when you are with them, be completely engaged in the discussion, common interests, and take it as a learning experience. Not once did the CEO I met take a call or get distracted in the course of the two hour session. He was completely present in the NOW.... such a contrast to many growing professionals including me, who are always busy, and not being present fully in any meeting or one on one. I decided that i will engage better in any discussion today on.... Treat each meeting or human encounter as a learning opportunity....

That indeed is LEADERSHIP.... by the day!! Is it not?!